For 17 years, Brian Kelly and a large group of friends have gathered in a sports bar on the eve of the NCAA Tournament.
The location tends to vary, but this year, they hunkered down at The Green Turtle in Towson for their annual ritual of drinking beer and divvying up the tournament field. Kelly — dressed in his favorite black and red Maryland Terps hat — runs the show a bit like a carnival barker. Each member of the group, 10 people strong this year, takes turns drawing five slips of paper from a hat, and if the eventual champion happens to be written on your slip of paper, you're the big winner of that year's pool.
It's typically one of Kelly's favorite days of the year, but there is a hint of a gray cloud hanging over the proceedings this week. For the first time since 1993, the Maryland Terrapins season was already finished when they sat down for the draw. The Terps weren't even invited to the National Invitation Tournament, the postseason consolation prize for those schools who miss out on going to the NCAA Tournament.
"There is a lot of animosity here," Kelly said. "We're huge Terps fans. We live and die with them. It's frustrating. Maryland not playing definitely puts a damper on things. It hurts."
Kelly and his friends aren't the only fans feeling glum this week. Not a single men's Division I program from the state of Maryland qualified for the postseason, something that has not happened since 1992. Although the University of Maryland has been the standard-bearer for the majority of that run — making 11 consecutive NCAA Tournament appearances from 1994 to 2005, and playing in either the NIT or NCAA Tournament each year after that — the Terps aren't the only schools to taste success during that stretch.
Navy has qualified for the NCAA Tournament five times (1994, 1996, 1997, 1998, 2000), Coppin State three times (1993, 1997 and 2008), Mount St. Mary's three times (1995, 1996, 2000), Morgan State twice (2009 and 2010), UMBC once (2008) and Loyola once (1994). This year, everyone — including the Towson Tigers, who haven't been to the postseason since 1991 — will be watching those games on television.
"It's a little strange and a little surreal," said Loyola coach Jimmy Patsos, a former assistant at the University of Maryland. "It's almost like it's never happened before. Hopefully one of us will get back next year. I really do root for at least one of the teams to make it every year, because it's good for all of us. I'm a team guy. I want someone from this area to go. Because we all know one another and play one another. I don't think there is any larger meaning to it. It's just a weird thing. I hope it's just a fluke."
It's unlikely the dearth of postseason teams from Maryland will affect turnout Thursday when fans gather to watch games in restaurants and bars. April Bittner, a bartender who works at The Green Turtle in Fells Point, said typically the first day of the NCAA Tournament draws a huge crowd of people playing hooky from work, and the fact that Thursday is also St. Patrick's Day will mean bars will be packed.
"We typically do about 30 percent better than the month before the first day of the NCAA Tournament regardless of who is playing," Bittner said. "Whether people are filling out their brackets, or just keeping up with games, they don't want to do that at home. I don't think it will make any difference that Maryland isn't playing. People come from all over the place to support their teams. I think people are a little fed up with Maryland right now anyway."
Bittner's feelings about the Terps have been echoed on sports talk radio a lot lately. Radio host Ken Weinman, who talks about college basketball nightly on his show on 105.7 The Fan, said he gets a flurry of calls from people who a really disappointed about the current state of college basketball in Maryland, specifically the Terps. The fact that Gary Williams and his program have missed March Madness four of the last seven years is infuriating.
"I agree with what (former CBS color commentator) Billy Packer said last week, that Maryland should be a Top 25 program every year," Weinman said. "I think people are actually starting to get pretty pissed about it. They're really disappointed. I love the tournament anyway, and I'm going to be glued to every game. But it definitely makes it more special when Maryland is in it."
What's most frustrating for local college basketball fans, Weinman says, is watching Maryland prep stars leave the area and lead other programs to success. Although Maryland did sign Nick Faust of City College, a 6-foot-5 guard most recruiting analysts rate as Baltimore's best high school player, they've missed out on a ton of talent from the area. This year, the Kansas Jayhawks earned a No. 1 seed thanks in no small part to the play of freshman guard Josh Selby, who was a McDonald's All-American at Lake Clifton High School. In previous years, star high school players like Michael Beasley, Kevin Durant, Ty Lawson and Carmelo Anthony all left the area to sign with another school, where they became college stars and were on their way to the NBA.
"Being from here, I can tell you there are three things that Baltimore people really care about: Ravens, Orioles and Maryland basketball," Weinman said. "And I think what's happened to the basketball program, which people love, is really unacceptable to the fan base. It's a weird situation because Gary Williams is going to the Hall of Fame one day. He's going to have his name on that court. I don't know that you can push him out, but you've got to make the tournament next year."
Student enthusiasm for the Maryland program has even been called into question recently. When an announced crowd of 15,186 showed up at Comcast Center for a game against Florida State in February — the smallest Maryland crowd for an ACC game since 2003 — ESPN's anchor Scott Van Pelt, a Maryland alum, was highly critical of the student body on his national radio show, calling the low attendance "frustrating" and "disgraceful."
"I think a lot of the diehard fans thought Van Pelt was right," said Luke Jackson, a sophomore at the University of Maryland who blogs about the team at mdprosports.com. "It's really not that hard to go watch free basketball. But you also have people saying 'Who the hell is Scott Van Pelt to say that to me? I have to study and work. Just because he lucked his way into a job on SportsCenter doesn't mean it will work out that way for me.' Either way, I think the feeling is that the tournament is a lot less fun without any of the local teams in it. You still fill out your brackets, but it's not quite the same."
Interestingly enough, while the current state of men's basketball in Maryland is grim, on the women's side, it's been one of the most-balanced seasons on record. Two programs — Maryland and Navy — will play in the NCAA Tournament, and three others were invited to the WNIT: Loyola, Morgan State and UMBC.
That's not much comfort, however, for those who follow men's college basketball and treat March Madness like the biggest sporting event of the year. Patsos has been saying for several years that he'd like to see all the small schools in Maryland form their own conference, which would make it much more likely the state would have a team in the NCAA Tournament each year.
"If you took everyone here, and included D.C., we could have one heck of a league," Patsos said. "We'd cut down on our travel, and someone would end up going every year. I think it would be great for all of us."
For some fans, even Terps fans, it doesn't matter too much. The first day of the men's tournament still feels like an unofficial national holiday.
"Maryland seems like they've been bad for so long now, it's hard to get too upset," said Terps fan Jason Sherfey, who was hanging out at The Green Turtle as a part of Kelly's group of friends. "Obviously it's less interesting when your home team is not in the tournament. It kind of puts a damper on the whole thing. But there are still enough teams out there to root for and make it interesting, as long as you're hanging out with friends, watching games."
kevin.vanvalkenburg@baltsun.com
Editor's note: An earlier version of this story had an incorrect Billy Packer statement about Maryland basketball being a Top 25 team every year.